The Trilingual Palestinian Rapper Putting the Arab World on Music’s Radar
Image taken from Saint Levant’s Instagram, an outtake from the “Very Few Friends” lyric video.
Image taken from Saint Levant’s Instagram, an outtake from the “Very Few Friends” lyric video.
Marwan Abdelhamid, famously known as Saint Levant, is putting Arab music and culture on the radar like never before. Having released or been a part of roughly twenty singles since 2020, all a linguistic combination of French, English, and Arabic, Levant is finally getting the attention he deserves.
Amid a joint tour with Egyptian singer Bayou and Levant’s producer, Playyard, spanning the US, Europe, and Middle East region, Levant, the Palestinian-Serbian, Algerian-French artist's career seemingly blew up overnight. The tour offers meet and greets with fans, many of whom discovered him through his TikTok videos, where he embodies the role of a classic masculine man who knows how to treat a woman.
One of his latest singles, “Very Few Friends” released at the end of November 2022, and his follow-up “I Guess” a joint single with Playyard, have skyrocketed his Spotify monthly listenership to over 5 million, with his Instagram ascending from roughly 43K followers to more than 400K and counting in the span of a month. In “Very Few Friends,” he serenades us with lines like “I want to take you to Paris and spoil you, I want to go to Marseille and enjoy you, I want those guys in your DM’s to talk to themselves and then tell all their friends that they know you…” Levant code switches throughout the track to communicate with the Arab diaspora, many of whom speak all three languages largely due to French colonization of various Middle Eastern and North African countries lasting through the mid-20th century.
Additionally, Levant’s music frequently references some of the most influential revolutionaries of all time, including Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, and Edward Said. He emulates their legacy by challenging the narrative around Palestinian identity and becoming an apartheid-resisting role model for Palestinian and Arab kids globally. In true activist form, he launched the 2048 Fellowship in early 2022, a 1-year stipend that covers the basic living expenses of a young Palestinian creative working on groundbreaking projects. Applications are slated to reopen in 2023, keep an eye on the website to apply and read about last year’s scholar.
Beyond the fellowship, 2048 has become an essential component of Saint Levant’s music brand. The year 2048 will mark 100 years after the Nakba, the event in which Palestinians were sentenced to illegal Israeli settler occupation, and a lifetime of violence and displacement. Gaza, the home city to Saint Levant, has been frequently referred to by its residents as the world’s largest open-air prison, the wardens being the infamous Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who were subsidized with $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing from the United States in 2022 alone. In an interview with Document Journal published in June of 2022, Levant explains “2048 is the world that (he) lives in—a world where Palestine is already free.” Through conceptualizing 2048, Levant has given the Palestinian resistance a powerful and unprecedented platform, creating hope for Palestinians and Arabs that through art, pan-Arabism, and collective resistance, our shared political imaginary of a free Palestine can become a reality.